The proliferation of the Internet and the World Wide Web, hereinafter "web", as a medium for individual communication and business marketing, has lead to significant growth in the number of active web sites over the last few years. A web site is a collection of related web pages, usually under common ownership. The pages in a web site are associated with one another, and made accessible from one or more pages in the web site, via hyperlinks (or simply "links"). A web site is typically arranged hierarchically in levels, as illustrated by conventional web site 100 in FIG. 1. Web site 100 is organized in some type of hierarchical arrangement to allow the user to accomplish a specific task. At the top level 110 of the hierarchy is a home page 112, (sometimes called a lodge page or an entry page), which informs the user of the functionality of the web site 100. On the next level 120 of the hierarchy are HyperText Markup Language (HTML) web pages 122, 124, 126 that operate to segregate the functionality of web site 100 into major sections. For example, if web site 100 is designed to provide user information about a particular product, the major sections may include a documentation section page 122 which links to specific areas of the documentation at lower levels 130, 140 in the hierarchy. These lower level pages 132, 134, 136, 142 may include instruction pages for installing 132, troubleshooting 134, etc., the product. The major section pages 122, 124, 126 may also include a configuration section page 124 that operates as a web-based interface to the product and allows the user to set up and modify the configuration of a remote product. Another major section page may include a remote front panel page 126 that also operates as a web-based interface to the product and allows the user to actually operate the instrument.
FIG. 2 is an illustrative embodiment of a page 200 of web site 100 displayed in web page frame 203 of Internet browser 201. Page 200 includes application banner 202, application navigation bar 204, application frame 206, and background 208. Application navigation bar 204 typically provides icons 240, 242, 244, 246, 248 which provide access to useful navigation tools such as search, view, etc. Application frame 206 is used for displaying the substantive content of the particular page being viewed. The substantive content of the page is customizable by the developer and hence may take on any number of various display formats. Web page designers typically include a graphical banner, shown in FIG. 2 as application banner 202 with graphical images 252, 254, to indicate identity, corporate identity, ownership, etc. A company or organization often uses the same banner repeatedly on each web page throughout its web site. The same banner may also be used throughout multiple web sites when those multiple web sites are owned by a common entity. For example, a company that provides a web site for each of its products typically will employ the same banner throughout each of its products' web sites for consistency, ease in development, and coherency in developing user recognition of the product in association with the company name and logo.
A banner generally includes one or more graphical elements (e.g., a company logo, the company name, etc.) over a background graphic. Web page banners are traditionally defined as a single graphical interchange format (GIF) image having a single horizontal width.
Most web pages are designed to be viewable on displays of low resolution and small display area. This allows the page to be viewed by the greatest number of possible user displays. In addition, for ease in readability, text is typically displayed in narrow columns. Thus, because the web page itself is designed for low resolution graphics or small area displays, single GIF image banners make sense since the application frame itself does not expand beyond the width of the banner.
Some web sites are designed to allow the user to expand the window to cover the entire display or to contract it to cover only a portion of the full display. When the window is contracted, the entire banner is typically viewable only in portions using a scrollbar. When the window is fully expanded, it fully expands only to the maximum width of the display it was designed for. Accordingly, a fully expanded web page on a high resolution or large area display does not cover the full expanse of the available display area if the web page was designed for a low resolution or small area display. Instead, its maximum width is fixed at the maximum width of the smaller display. Again, however, single GIF image banners work well as long as the application frame itself does not expand beyond the width of the banner. In certain applications, however, web pages are designed to take advantage of high resolution or larger area display screens. For example, a web page based application interface may require the ability to view multiple page elements at once, and therefore require a large display area and or very high resolution. As another example, the substantive content (e.g., detailed photographs or instrumentation snapshots) often require a high resolution display for proper viewing. If the web page graphics are designed to maximize the display area to optimize the available space for a high resolution display, the web page requires a larger application frame, and therefore an appropriately expanded banner to cover the width of the application frame.
Because banners are implemented as a single GIF image, to expand the banner to fit larger and/or higher resolution displays, the implementation technique requires a separate GIF banner image to be implemented with the appropriate fixed width for each targeted display type. The single GIF image banner cannot be scaled horizontally without altering the image unless it is simultaneously scaled vertically in the same proportion--in other words, the same aspect ratio (i.e., x:y relationship) must be maintained. However, altering the vertical scale is generally undesirable because to do so reduces the amount of display space that would otherwise be available for substantive web page content. Accordingly, a need exists for a method for supporting web pages (e.g., instrument snapshots that require a high resolution display for proper viewing, or interfaces that expand to fit the horizontal width of a high resolution display) that maximally expands to fit the width of the web page window regardless of the size or resolution of the user's display. Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a method to expand and contract a web page banner to fit the horizontal width of the window automatically without altering the size of the images embedded in the banner.